The science journalist and presenter Mai Thi Nguyen-Kim ended her video statement with the suggestion of political engagement as an experiment against populism. In a YouTube video a few days ago, Nguyen-Kim (36) gave the impression that she could become politically active. Now she said in the new edition of her ZDFneo show: “I’m not going into politics.” She would like to sincerely apologize for the calculated ambivalence of her words.
The resolution (in advance in the ZDF media library; linear 10:15 p.m.) took place in the evening: The whole thing was an experiment as part of the ZDFneo program “Maithink X – The Show”. At the start of the new season, an edition of the show is about populism – title: “How populist politicians are fooling us”.
Nguyen-Kim clearly shows the rhetorical tricks used by populists, including the false dilemma argument, the so-called ad hominem argument and the straw man argument. At the end she says that she also used some of these typical rhetorical figures, which often come from the right, in her video and wanted to show how susceptible “we all” are to populism.
For example, in the widely reported video, Nguyen-Kim said: “I’m worried about the future of our country and I’m no longer just watching it.”
In the almost nine-minute clip, Nguyen-Kim also said that you can’t make politics with science alone, but sometimes it’s not so bad to “shake up a deadlock with an outsider’s perspective.”
The award-winning science journalist Mai Thi Nguyen-Kim became best known for her YouTube channel “maiLab”, on which she explained scientific topics concisely for laypeople.
